James Franco's 'Child of God' May Accidentally Appeal to Generation Tinder

James Franco certainly knows how to commandeer a conversation. At this morning's press junket for his latest directorial effort, Child of God—an adaption of Cormac McCarthy's macabre 1973 novel about a depraved Tennessee outlaw named Lester Ballard—the multihyphenate had an answer for every question lobbed his way. Sure, the film's star, Scott Haze, was on hand as well, but the bulk of the queries were aimed at the man who singlehandedly co-opted shameless self portraiture into high art. (If you haven't seen his most recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, I suggest you give it a whirl.)

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But instead of the goofy, self-deprecating guy we love to watch in movies such as This Is the End and interact with via his prolific Instagram posts, we were presented with Franco the Lecturer, whose sound bites included everything from a rumination on finding "the kernel" of the story—for him it's when Ballard (Haze) encounters an asphyxiated teenager in an abandoned car in the woods—to his far-reaching artistic appetites: "If I believe in something, I have no inhibitions" he began, his booming voice lighting up the sound boards of six perfectly-angled digital voice recorders. "I've done art projects with Paul McCarthy where his dirty ass was in my face. I kind of feel like, if I believe in something, I'll do anything."

I nearly packed up at this point, but then Haze, who had been politely nodding along with his friend's tangential commentary, broke down the film's real kernel of universal truth. "The way I look at this is, here's a guy whose father committed suicide, whose land was taken from him. Nobody has shown him love, and has no friends," he began quietly. "Back in the '50s, you couldn't just go online find another girlfriend. Lester starts to find love and then the love is taken from him. And he wants that feeling again, by any means necessary." Franco opened his mouth and then closed it. There was nothing left to say. Because isn't that precisely why we keep swiping right?